Arsene Wenger has had a tough time of it since a certain Portuguese upstart arrived on British shores in 2004. Since then, ‘The Professor’ hasn’t won a single game against Mourinho and Arsenal haven’t come close to winning the Premier League.
We take a look at some of the key reasons this universally respected manager seems to have lost his touch and explain why he consistently struggles to compete with the ‘Special One’.
Mourinho is pragmatic, Wenger is inflexible
It doesn’t matter what the season throws at Mourinho, he always seems to have an answer. The Portuguese maestro manages complicated month-by-month scenarios as artfully as he handles egos, press conferences and training drills.
However, Mourinho’s adaptability doesn’t impress everyone; particularly those who have to endure season after season without major trophies as a result of it.
Towards the end of the last campaign, when Arsenal fell too far adrift to compete for the title, predictably the excuses from Arsene Wenger began to tumble out. Now that his club are spending more than Chelsea in the transfer market, Wenger is forced down one narrow channel of complaint when he delivers his scheduled weekly jab at the West London club.
Before the decisive derby match in April, the Frenchman brought about giddy laughter in the Emirates press room when he stated ‘it’s easy to defend’ during his withering, dismissive analysis of Chelsea’s post-Christmas winning streak.
Predictably, after Chelsea made a poignant spectacle of suffocating Arsenal out of the title race with an immaculate defensive performance, Wenger made a point of piggybacking ‘boring, boring Chelsea’ jibes from the Arsenal fans when during an interview with BBC’s World at One, he stated that ‘big clubs have a responsibility to win but to win with style’.
Following his logic: if big clubs have that responsibility, then either Arsenal aren’t a big club or Wenger himself has been falling way short of his responsibilities for over a decade.
In the same interview he also said: ‘I always like to think that the guy who wakes up in the morning after a hard week of work, has that moment, that fraction of a second when he opens his eyes, ‘Oh, today I go to watch my team!’ and it makes him happy. ‘He thinks ‘I can see something special today’.’
Here’s an idea: why doesn’t Wenger take the time to think about the poor bloke who wakes up after a hard week of work and thinks ‘Jesus Christ, we’ve got Everton today. We always drop points in these games and we’ll never win the league because we’ve got a bunch of unimposing, ineffectual lightweights at the back.’
When Wenger starts pontificating, it’s his glaring logical omissions which deserve genuine scrutiny. Crucially, he flatly refuses to give due respect to those who successfully provide compelling, tangible counterarguments to his footballing philosophy.
An example of this occurred a few years ago when a Daily Mail journalist asked Wenger about Didier Drogba’s incredible goalscoring record against Arsenal.
‘“It’s funny because he doesn’t do a lot, but he’s efficient in what he does.” He shrugged.
The Ivorian scored 15 goals in 15 games against Wenger’s team. That’s not efficient, that’s embarrassing. Perhaps if Arsene had given credit where it was due over the years, he may have found a way to deal with Didier. Perhaps his players would have taken more responsibility in trying to stop him.
Instead Drogba destroyed them time after time, shrug after shrug, each goal serving as further confirmation of one inescapable truth: Wenger values the self aggrandising pursuit of philosophical superiority above the tangible goal of winning games and trophies.
Mourinho sets his team up to win, Wenger sets his team up to make a statement
Looking beyond the bitter verbal exchanges, it’s clear that Mourinho is the most flexible and capable tactician in the Premier League. When the pitches are in decent shape and his squad isn’t heavily affected by suspensions and injuries, he sets his teams out to play dynamic, attacking football.
When conditions are against the players or his side are failing to conjure their best form, he simplifies things. He doesn’t mind appearing unfashionable in order to cope with the unique challenge of a ‘wet, windy Tuesday night in Stoke™’.
That is one of the key differences between Jose and the self-excusing ‘purists’ he jousts with domestically; he builds his teams around an infectious battling ideology rather than handing players a manual detailing the trajectories of passes they can and cannot play. As a result, they fight for him and for the cause.
Wenger’s outright refusal to acknowledge two key tenets of English football must cause ongoing concern for Arsenal fans. He proudly ignores the ever-so-embarrasingly-British insistence on having a ‘plan B’, as well as the need to sign, cherish and then eventually replace combative players.
It’s hard to say why he is so affronted by physicality. Granted, there has been a detrimental overvaluation of muscularity in English football over the years and this obsession has had a negative impact on the overall standard of our game.
Surely though, after enjoying years of success built on defensive foundations laid by George Graham, then enduring 11 years of failure as a result of bucking this trend, he must recognise that there is a happy balance that needs to be maintained in order to succeed in England.
Mourinho embraces historically successful tactics, Wenger ignores them
If Wenger continues to pursue this impossible attacking ideal, his side will continue to struggle to compete for the biggest prizes. Besides, there’s a team in Spain preaching from a similar hymn sheet and doing a much better job of it: Barcelona.
The hilarious thing is, the Catalans only managed to win their first Champions League after they tweaked their tactics due to a humbling defeat to Chelsea in the 2004/05 season.
Around that time, they adapted their approach by signing players like Gerard Pique, Mark Van Bommel and Yaya Toure to ensure that they wouldn’t be outmuscled by physical teams in the big games. This shift allowed their incredible attacking players to work their magic without fear and resulted in the gradual construction of one of the greatest footballing sides of all time.
When Wenger last won the Premier League, achieving an unprecedented unbeaten season in 2003/04, he found a similar balance. The rule? There had to be at least one warrior to cover each technical attacking player in the starting XI.
Here are the most used players from the ‘Invincibles’ season, shown in Wenger’s preferred formation and set alongside the current Chelsea team.
As you can see, there is a clear delineation between attackers and defenders. In defense and defensive midfield, Arsenal had six players whose primary function was to patrol and protect. On the wings and up front they had four players tasked with causing havoc at the other end.
If you look at Chelsea’s current team, it’s plain to see that Mourinho continues to use this proven approach.
In fact, while people are keen to compare the current Chelsea side to the 2004/05 league winning team, the most apt comparison might actually be drawn with Arsenal’s unbeaten team, who incidentally provided an evergreen template for all others to follow.
Mourinho is focussed on winning, Wenger is focussed on justifying failure
Wenger’s haughty views on the game only sound insightful to those who drink from the ever-deepening moat of commercially motivated, self-soothing propaganda which surrounds Arsenal, Liverpool and (to a lesser extent) Man United.
Since Mourinho arrived in 2004, a legion of prominent ‘big club’ brand advocates have been publically dabbing their bloodied noses with the heavily saturated comforters of ‘style’, ‘history’ and ‘money’, trying to emphasise increasingly tenuous (and necessarily intangible) underlying differences between their clubs and the supposedly terrible, nouveau riche West Londoners.
No matter what Chelsea do, accusations are levelled at them with disproportionate vigour.
’Their style is terrible’, ‘They have no history’, ‘Their players have no class’, ‘They spend their way to success’. etc.
This compelling brand of weaponised whinging has had the desired effect up until now. In fact, the arguments against Chelsea have become so deeply ingrained in football folklore that opposing fans now get to feel like their team is winning, even when they’re actually losing.
To put it simply, the pervasive message is that you win a moral victory just by supporting Arsenal or Liverpool. No strings attached. You know you’ve made the right choice because you’ve got the constant reassurance of ex-players on TV to aggressively back it up week-in-week-out. Even if you see your side rattling around in midtable, playing terrible football, despite having spent £400 million on transfers in the last five years: you can still be sure that you’ll never watch alone.
This form of hollow corporate devotion is great for the bean counters at these hallowed clubs because their fans still keep buying tickets and shirts regardless of their team’s performances. It also means carefully cultivated institutional reputations remain intact, which (in financial terms) is one of the things global corporations try to protect and nurture above all else.
However, this hyperfocus on brand management seems to be coming back to haunt Arsenal and Liverpool. Mainly because it’s so much easier for their managers – who are often the most prolific brand advocates – to criticise the opposition and ride the wave of assumed superiority than it is for them to find a way to actually compete with someone as talented and driven as Mourinho.
Ever since Wenger gave in and started complaining about Jose in 2004, he’s never recovered.
The players at these clubs can’t have escaped being tainted by this absurdity. This means Arsenal players typically hide behind their delicate playing style without showing the necessary tenacity to compete while Liverpool players are left harping on about their history instead of building a brighter future.
In the background of this glum serialised TV complain-a-thon, starring unlovable curmudgeons like Jamie Carragher and Graham Souness, Chelsea have been successfully cultivating their own attractive playing style, making their own history and working towards an ideal of maintaining financial balance in the transfer market.
Mourinho started this revolution in 2004 and continues to carry Chelsea in the right direction. In the same time period, Wenger has dragged his club backwards through sheer self indulgence.
Can anyone legitimately argue that Arsenal are now closer to winning the league than they were in 2004 off the back of an unbeaten season?
Perhaps the signing of Petr Cech will make a big difference to the team. Perhaps Wenger will make two or three combative signings in key positions and prove everyone wrong.
If he doesn’t, we’re probably going to witness another 11 years of whining while Mourinho continues to confirm his superiority over the Frenchman in the most obvious way possible; by winning league titles.
